[Untitled Game] Opinions wanted on sortition system.

[MJGraham]

I'm working on a game set in modern day Western Africa. I've decided to post here to get a little feedback on the system I want to use for resolving challenges. As the title suggests, I'm using sortition (i.e. drawing beads from a bag). Okay so here's how I think it might work:

1. All character have four attributes: Authority, Fellowship, Might, and Prosperity
2. Attributes are rated from 1 to 5.
4. Each attribute has 1 to 5 wounds.
5. An attribute's wounds start out at 1 but will increase in time
6. The Griot (GM) assigns a difficulty rating of 6 to 10 to the challenge
7. A number of white beads equal to the difficulty of the challenge are placed in a bag
8. Five black beads are also added to the bag.
9. The player decides which attribute his character is using.
10. One red bead is added to the bag for every wound that attribute has
11. The player draws 5 beads at random from the bag.
12. His character succeeds if the total number of red and black beads equals a 7 or higher   
13. If the player draws any red beads there will be negative consequences (complications) arising from failing/succeeding at the challenge.
14. The character gains another wound in the attribute used if all the red beads are drawn.
15. Whenever a player draws 5 red beads, his character is eliminated from the game.


Thoughts? Suggestions?

[Callan S.]

Just looking toward the broader picture, do you plan for each game session to have a climax? If so, will mechanics be involved in arriving at it, or will it be entirely GM orchestrated?

[Excalibur]

First, what is your game about? It is not about "modern day Western Africa" that is the game's setting. Is the game about fear? Hatred? Anger? Survival? Interaction?

Second, Based on what the game is about, how do your four attributes relate to that? I can see how your 4 listed might be social interaction attributes.

I am interested in the resolution mechanic but it might be a bit too cumbersome in the long run, especially when dealing with certain situations.

I'm working on a game set in modern day Western Africa. I've decided to post here to get a little feedback on the system I want to use for resolving challenges. As the title suggests, I'm using sortition (i.e. drawing beads from a bag). Okay so here's how I think it might work:

1. All character have four attributes: Authority, Fellowship, Might, and Prosperity
2. Attributes are rated from 1 to 5.
4. Each attribute has 1 to 5 wounds.
5. An attribute's wounds start out at 1 but will increase in time

So, characters start out wounded? I would assume that you start with 0 wounds and go up from there. Do you start them out at 1 due to the mechanic of adding wounds to the game?

6. The Griot (GM) assigns a difficulty rating of 6 to 10 to the challenge
7. A number of white beads equal to the difficulty of the challenge are placed in a bag
8. Five black beads are also added to the bag.
9. The player decides which attribute his character is using.
10. One red bead is added to the bag for every wound that attribute has
11. The player draws 5 beads at random from the bag.
12. His character succeeds if the total number of red and black beads equals a 7 or higher
13. If the player draws any red beads there will be negative consequences (complications) arising from failing/succeeding at the challenge.
14. The character gains another wound in the attribute used if all the red beads are drawn.
15. Whenever a player draws 5 red beads, his character is eliminated from the game.

So, I guess that the white beads mean nothing? They're just filler meant to aid in the failure of the challenge?

When the player draws a total of 7 red and black beads, he succeeds in the challenge. Then what is the difficulty score used for? Just to increase the chance of the player drawing white beads which keeps him from selecting 7 red and black beads?

What if the player draws 5 red beads and 2 black beads? According to your mechanic, the player will be eliminated from the game because they've been wounded. But he's drawn 7 red and black beads from the bag which means he's succeeded.

Rule 10 will block any chance of drawing 5 red beads at any point in the game. If you start with 1 wound and you take on your first challenge, 1 red bead is placed in the bag. OK, so I draw from the bag (we'll say a challenge of 10 so 10 white beads) of 16 beads. 10 white, 5 black, and 1 red. I will never draw 5 red beads because there aren't any more than 1 in the bag. I won't be able to kill myself off because I'll never be able to draw 5 red beads. I assume that if a stat has wounds, once the wounds match the attribute the character is killed or rendered mortally or fatally wounded.

Rules 14 and 15 conflict. Does the player get eliminated from the game or does he gain a wound for drawing all 5 red beads?

If red beads deliver negative consequences whether you're successful or not, why are the represented as successes?

My take would be this:

• The GM determines the difficulty (6-10 is fine) and the stat required to complete the challenge.
  
• That number of white beads are added to the bag.
  
• 5 black beads are put in the bag.
  
• A number of red beads from 1 to the character's stat wounds + 1 are added to the bag.
  
• The player then draws a number of beads equal to the stat the GM has selected. He does this 1 at a time. If a red bead is selected then the stat is wounded and the drawing stops. The player has failed in the challenge.
  
• If the number of black beads plus the character's stat equal or exceed the challenge rating, the character succeeds.
  
• Otherwise, the character has failed the challenge.
  

Using your stated rules, I imagine someone using their Prosperity to shoot someone. This could be that they hire an assassin or something, but that isn't the character performing the act of shooting, it's another character entirely. I would have to choose Might over Authority, Fellowship, or Prosperity for the governing stat in this case.

You are trying to buy a jeep. You could use Authority to reduce the price, Fellowship to befriend the seller and reduce the price, take the jeep by force using Might, or just haggle and Barter using Prosperity.

Leaving the choice up to the player will make things complicated.

[Ar Kayon]

Western Africa, huh?

I think it would be cool if the beads represented diamonds, and the red one blood diamonds.

[MJGraham]

I made a mistake in my first post. I should have posted this:

12. Add together any red or white beads the player has drawn to his character's attribute
13. His character succeeds if this total equals a 7 or higher   
14. If the player draws any red beads there will be negative consequences (complications) arising from failing/succeeding at the challenge.
15. The character gains another wound in the attribute used if all the red beads are drawn.
16. Whenever a player draws 5 red beads, his character is eliminated from the game.


Thanks for all the replies so far. I'd like to write more, but it's getting late here. I'll be able to respond to individual posts tomorrow.

[greyorm]

Hey Excalibur (er, name please?),

I'm reading these rules a bit differently than you, and I don't see the same issues you do or the rule conflicts. I'm going to walk through how I see them so MJ can see how the rules are being read by different folks (which will hopefully help him with writing them).

So, characters start out wounded? I would assume that you start with 0 wounds and go up from there. Do you start them out at 1 due to the mechanic of adding wounds to the game?

I think it's pretty clear you start out with 1. And I expect that you start at 1 so that there is a chance of drawing a red bead and taking another wound.

When the player draws a total of 7 red and black beads, he succeeds in the challenge. Then what is the difficulty score used for? Just to increase the chance of the player drawing white beads which keeps him from selecting 7 red and black beads?

Keeping in mind MJ's correction: the difficulty score is used to weight the odds of the draw. You have a better chance at drawing more white beads the more white beads are placed in the bag (though this is conceptually backwards to the norm, since in this case a higher difficulty makes a task easier rather than harder).

What if the player draws 5 red beads and 2 black beads? According to your mechanic, the player will be eliminated from the game because they've been wounded. But he's drawn 7 red and black beads from the bag which means he's succeeded.

Yes, it's a, "You succeed, but..." mechanic. So you accomplish your task, but that's also the last thing you do in the game. Success does not have to mean "And I also survive."
(Also, please note Rule 11 clearly states you only draw 5 beads at a time, not 7 or 16 or whatever.)

Rule 10 will block any chance of drawing 5 red beads at any point in the game. If you start with 1 wound and you take on your first challenge, 1 red bead is placed in the bag. OK, so I draw from the bag (we'll say a challenge of 10 so 10 white beads) of 16 beads. 10 white, 5 black, and 1 red. I will never draw 5 red beads because there aren't any more than 1 in the bag. I won't be able to kill myself off because I'll never be able to draw 5 red beads. I assume that if a stat has wounds, once the wounds match the attribute the character is killed or rendered mortally or fatally wounded.

Look at the whole system: this only means you can't be removed from play early in the game because there is only 1 red bead in the bag to start with. Once you draw a red bead, you take a wound and another red bead is added to the bag. Eventually, you will have five wounds and five red beads are added to the bag at which point removal from play becomes an option.

However, I am curious how this works when you have an attribute of 2 or 3. Can you get more wounds on an attribute than you have in it?

Rules 14 and 15 conflict. Does the player get eliminated from the game or does he gain a wound for drawing all 5 red beads?

They don't conflict, actually. (Your confusion here is akin to asking in OD&D "if at 0 hps your character is hit for 10hps damage does he lose 10hps or does he die?")

If red beads deliver negative consequences whether you're successful or not, why are the represented as successes?

They represent "You succeed, but..." or "You fail, and..." So BOTH things happen! Adding complexity to the result, so things can be successes that complicate matters, or failures that make you lose more than you bargained on. It's a way to make success/failure more complex than a binary result, without relying on number of successes or similar mechanics. Very nice. And awesome. My game, ORX, uses a similar mechanic (When you roll multiple dice, if any of your dice beat the other roll you win the exchange, but if you roll a "1" on any of the dice, you take an injury -- regardless of your success or failure.)

[Excalibur]

You can call me Curt.

Ah, yeah, misread that. I shouldn't try to reply to posts and write papers at the same time, distraction is bound to creep in.

After rereading the rules, I misread the "all" part of rule 14. So if he has 1 red bead in the bag and draws it, his attribute takes a hit. This will make it more difficult to be wounded the more wounded you are which is sort of counter-intuitive to me. I would think that the more wounded you are, the more difficult things will get. I guess players will continue to use other stats until they can't take anymore wounds without getting 5 beads in the bag.

You can probably strike a lot of what I ask then since I did indeed misread. I still think that players should start with 0 wounds. Just have them put one red bead in the bag if that's the case. It's like saying: See that perfectly healthy guy over there. You can't see it, but he's hurt somehow.

Now, if you started each attribute at full and as they drew red beads add wounds, then that would make more sense. Sort of like hit points for attributes. You have a prosperity of 5 and you get a red bead which means you have 1 wound and can handle up to 4 more on that attribute.

[Vulpinoid]

I threw out some ideas regarding this kind of game mechanism early last year.

The Conscience Bag

...and I'm working on a similar concept now, I'll write something more specific shortly.

[Locke]

The beads thing is cool but sees cumbersome to me.  is it possible to roll most things and pull the bags out for a special occasion?  Is this for an RPG?